Intelligent Assistants for Business Success

In times when home offices and mobile work have become the norm, the need to maintain the flow of information within organizations is increasing.

Technological upheavals, organizational changes, as well as employee demands for more flexibility in everyday work are forcing companies to constantly reorient themselves. Despite the wide range of solutions for remote collaboration and ad hoc requests, complex issues often pose a challenge when neither an assistant nor an expert is sitting next door for a short-term clarification.

To ensure that the flow of information in the company can be maintained regardless of where management or employees happen to be, more and more companies are turning to intelligent knowledge management solutions such as Insight Engines. Using artificial intelligence methods, they structure the existing corporate knowledge from various corporate data sources and create the basis for a company-wide, orderly provision of information in real-time. In addition, they are easy to integrate into corporate IT (appliance, SaaS solution), corporate processes, and the working environment to be operated intuitively.

Insight engines extend the capabilities of traditional enterprise search applications with innovative artificial intelligence (AI) methods to optimize knowledge flow and information delivery across organizations.

To do so, they start exactly where employees produce, store and process the data, and consolidate the information from the various source systems. From specific business applications, e-mail programs, and databases to the intranet and cloud – all information, regardless of whether it is structured metadata (entries in business applications) or unstructured content (text, audio, video), is included in a search query. Instead of separate, manual searches for relevant facts in all the different applications, the Insight Engine prepares the information according to requirements and makes it available with just one query. Users are able to quickly find and process the information they need and make informed decisions.

Insight engines apply artificial intelligence algorithms and techniques to respond adequately to questions posed in natural language.

With the help of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU), they are able to recognize, understand, translate, analyze, interpret, and, most importantly, respond to human language accordingly.

Instead of listing all possible results, the Insight Engine determines the specific need and proactively extracts facts that match the query in the respective context. Enhanced with relevant additional information, this results in a 360-degree view of the queried information.

If, for example, a specific name is searched in the e-mail program, not only the corresponding e-mails but also other relevant information such as appointments, reports, documents created by the person, or the current status of a project are determined automatically from the connected data sources, and a 360-degree view of the person is generated. In this way, documents required at short notice for a specific meeting can be compiled at the push of a button, or reports can be generated automatically.

Insight engines recognize the specific authorizations or knowledge requirements for the specific task area tailored to each employee and tailor the results accordingly. Users thus receive concrete, individualized answers based on the use case, context, way of working, role, and position in the company. This ensures that only employees with the appropriate access rights are able to retrieve critical and sensitive information.

Analysis of user behavior and work practices ensure that the Insight Engine's performance increases the longer it is in use.

Using machine learning technologies, especially deep learning, Insight Engines analyze previous search queries, their intention, and interactions with hits. Individual relevance models can be calculated, results can be categorized, and they can be displayed in a context-specific, personalized, and proactive manner according to their significance. Users thus have the knowledge base that is optimal for them at the right time.

Overall, Insight Engines create a solid basis on which strategic and operational decisions can be made more effective, and opportunities and risks for the company can be identified quickly.